The awakening of IT security boom in Africa

June 13, 2018 | IOT, Access Control, Cyber Incidents

The abundance of cloud computing, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT)are driving massive growth in IT opportunities in Africa off late. The IT sector in South Africa is expected to reach R175 billion by 2022, at a 5-year compounded annual growth rate of 4.25%, according to the IDC’s latest Economic Impact Model report. Not only that, the gradual increase in the adoption of cloud services is expected to create numerous job opportunities too in Africa region.

After TechCentral suffered massive data breach losing the control of almost 60 million user data (mostly South African citizens) during March 2017, most of the business enterprises joined hands as a resolution to make Africa cyber risk-free continent. This is considered to be the largest data breach incident in the history of South Africa. Once the hacking news spread like wildfire among the cyber security stalwarts, most of them believed some wily crook as the reason. However, later on it was found that the hacker didn’t require any effort to take hostage of the crucial information. Everything was easily available on an open Web server.

This incident pointed security officials that there is no substitute for taking preventive measures. Consequently, it became quite obvious that South African organizations stay tuned to the latest security trends in IT. It forced them to opt for the most effective solutions that protect their intellectual property, private data, and digital assets. The cyber criminals at the same time are introducing more sophisticated and advanced hacking techniques to exploit vulnerabilities in IT technology across all industry sectors.

From the perspective of African IT industry, ARCON, one of the leading risk control solution providers, predicts that there will be a huge investment in cyber security initiatives, since most of the organizations are toiling to protect their crucial digital information assets from any cyber threats. Talking about the prominent business prospects, Mr. Paresh Makwana, VP Business Development, Africa, said,

“Both private and public sector organizations have started to reconstruct their cyber security strategies to combat the larger and emerging concerns in the cyber world. Protecting business information is highly crucial under any circumstances and IT security development is the only way out.”

He also added, “We have observed in the last few quarters that most of the African organizations lack proper access control management leaving most of the accounts unmonitored and vulnerable to exploitation. These uncontrolled activities impose serious security concerns among the organizations and largely put business confidentiality at stake.”

Enterprises from Africa are not just working to empower the outer periphery to protect their systems from malefactors but also internally to track the phishing emails and other suspicious activities happening in the corporate network. However, the number of cyber incidents occurring in Africa is expected to rise. Hence, a secure network infrastructure is the most important component to stay ahead in today’s cut-throat business competition.